I'm a Libertarian living in Humboldt County, CA. I've lived here in Eureka since 1973 and joined the Libertarian Party in 1992. This blog will mostly focus on local political issues, but I may stray into state and national issues as well, when I can't help myself. Please post your comments by clicking on the "comments" link at the bottom of each post. Although I do moderate comments, you need not be a registered user to post them.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Raw Milk

The Board of Supes is going to hear from supporters of raw milk on Tuesday. Supporters want to repeal the ordinance prohibiting the sale of raw milk in the county. More power to them, I guess, since I don't like the idea of the government telling people what they can eat, drink or smoke.

Raw milk isn't for me, though. I actually bought a small bottle of raw milk at some health food store in Southern CA over 30 years ago. I wasn't impressed, especially with all the cream that formed at the top of the bottle. Yuck!

But, aside from that, you can just call me paranoid. I wouldn't of thought much about raw milk until I read the story about a gal in Del Norte County that was paralyzed and nearly died from drinking raw milk (part 2 of the story here, part 3 here).

I realize that doesn't happen to everyone. Nobody else buying milk from that diary got sick, but that's enough to scare me off. Especially since I don't like raw milk, anyway.

Addendum: Ooops! Almost forgot to include a link to one of the proponent's My Word column in support of repealing the ordinance that appeared in yesterday's Times- Standard.

Louis Pasteur saved the life of a child in France when he developed the process of heating raw milk to kill toxic bacteria in it. First one child, then thousands. The process of Pasteurization spread across the world as loving parents discovered a way to protect their children from illness and death from this food-borne illness.

Now these local fools want to make raw milk legal. After all, they argue, it is our right to eat what we want.

Before the County Supervisors decide to vote on this issue, they had damn well better answer this question: Will these raw milk enthusiasts be permitted to feed this dangerous raw milk to their children?

Raw milk is fine, it should be legal. If folks get sick, that's their own bad for drinking it.

That said, the pro-raw milk lobby are idiots. They point out that in the US only 85 out of 1614 serious food-borne illness reports were from raw milk (wall st. journal fda stats). Yeaa... 85 vs. 1529 when those 1529 people mostly prolly got sick off of common food like fish and chicken. And yet 85 people got sick off raw milk which is mostly consumed by a tiny minority of folks who believe it is some some kinna magic potion. The pro-raw milk shit is just people who drink gallons of milk trying to find a belief system to make it good for them instead of it just making them constipated.

Still, no doubt raw milk tastes good so should therefore be totally legal. I don't think it is even necessary for them to say it is not pasteurized since pasteurized milk usually says that anyway. Milk itself is not great for people just look at all these fat Americans. Maybe it'd be a good thing if people were scared.

"Louis Pasteur saved the life of a child in France when he developed the process of heating raw milk to kill toxic bacteria in it. First one child, then thousands. The process of Pasteurization spread across the world as loving parents discovered a way to protect their children from illness and death from this food-borne illness."

That could have been because of the practices at condensed,factory type farms.I would love to have the opportunity to buy raw milk,but I would never do so from any factory type farm.

mresquan indeed it was at the dawn of cow factories that milk started being more poison.

It's a circle. Like when hydro first started going big and folks knew pythium was icing their tomato crops. So, folks started pouring just enough unstable h2o2 in to kill everything except the roots. These days nobody who is smart uses h2o2 because folks have realized that if they inject oxygen, the aerobic bacteria multiply and kill pythium. Same shit for milk. If you inject cattle with drugs to counteract the lack of airspace in order to fight off bacteria, the bad bacteria can take over and multiply. After all, a sterile environment is ideal for bacteria to grow. Raw milk from open-air animals most def has "good" bacteria in it killing off "bad" ones. How else would calves be able to drink it?

But still is weak when these Weston A. Price morons claim raw milk is good as in "God's creation." Cows are a human creation. No other animal downs milk after they grow up. No other animal drinks milk from other animals. Hell even most humans don't do that. That ain't God, that is white people.

1. The milk that the lady drank was ILLEGAL raw milk. This is what people have to buy if they want raw milk because clean safe raw milk is banned.

2. Raw milk in California is not the same as raw milk in the other states. Each state sets the standards for milk and raw milk and California has the strictest standards in the country.

3. California raw milk has to be even cleaner than pasteurized milk(10,000 per mil vs 15,000 per milk for pasteruized!). Wouldn't it make sense to have clean fresh safe milk that started out that way, instead of milk that is produced dirty (over 100,000 per mil!!) then cooked to make clean, but still doesn't have to be as clean as raw?

4. If raw milk, which is required in the state to have lower bacteria counts than pasteurized, is banned, shouldn't pasteurized milk be banned as well? Because with higher pathogen counts, it is actually less safe than raw!

5. The consumers want the product. This isn't milk out of some dairy's tank; only 2 cow dairys in the whole state are producing California approved raw milk, so obviously this isn't a huge market, and it's also very very hard to keep such high standards.The consumer's choice here is to either get milk shipped in from out of county at great cost ( and no benefit to the local economy) or to buy unsafe backyard milk, which is what happened to the lady in CC.

Raw California milk, in fact just like all milk produced in California, is held to much higher standards than milk or raw milk from other states.

There has never been a health issue that has been proven to come from California Legal ( new law, btw) raw milk. But pasteurized milk....all the time.

Milk is for white people? I guess all of those indigenous people in India and Africa who drink milk learned it from us whities. Oh and all the whities that started using dairy products 12,000 years ago. In Africa.

I would like to nail this down real good here so there is no doubt about just how wrong the FDA is.

Vonderplanitz and Campbell Douglass’s testimony on Raw Milk, this is probably the best reference for anyone who wants the truth about Raw vs Pasteurized Milk so they can make up their own minds using the scientific facts. Below are just two interesting tidbits from this report that drives a stake right where it belongs between the eyes of the FDA.

Throughout USA, for nearly 40 years, millions of people drank over 3 billion glasses of Alta Dena Dairy’s raw milk and there was not one epidemic, and not one proved case of foodborne illness because of it (Exhibit K, p. 58).

Dr. Paul Blake, N.D.“If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.” ~Thomas Jefferson